Michigan Library Association

Note From Debbie

January 25, 2024

MLA is embarking on a new and exciting chapter as we prepare to be a fully remote workforce!

As many of you know, MLA’s office lease at 3410 Belle Chase Way in Lansing will be expiring at the end of June 2024 and the MLA board has made the strategic decision not to renew our lease. While the staff has been “mostly” remote since March 2020 when the pandemic hit, we will now be going “fully” remote. With five months left, MLA staff are working tirelessly in figuring out all the big and small details of this permanent move – leasing a PO Box, making address change requests, updating business cards, renting a larger storage unit, repacking and sorting conference supplies, preparing furniture to be sold or given away, shutting off utilities, updating our remote policy, and making sure the staff have everything they need at their home offices. What to do with our copy machine might be our biggest challenge…how will we survive without it?!

Friday, January 21, 2022 12:00 AM

MLA Connect Advocacy Hour: Penal Fines, Civil Fines and Library Funding

SPECIAL DAY AND TIME! Friday, January 21, 2022
3:30 - 4:30 PM

Join us for a special Friday afternoon edition of our MLA Connect Advocacy Hour! On Friday, January 21 at 3:30 PM, we will welcome Michigan State Senator Ed McBroom and MLA Lobbyist Bob Devries for a discussion on the difference between penal fines and civil fines, and the ripple effects on library funding as a result of criminal justice reform. Join us to learn more about civil fines and penal fines, how these fines fund libraries, and the laws that surround them.

Senator McBroom represents Michigan’s 38th Senate District, located in the Upper Peninsula, and Chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Oversight Committees.

View Coffee Hour Recording

2024 State Budget Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference

In good news, economists painted a positive picture of the state's economic outlook at the Consensus Revenue Estimating conference held on January 12, 2024.

The revenue predictions were made during this twice-a-year meeting in which economists and leaders of the state budget office and the House and Senate fiscal agencies come to a common understanding of how much tax revenue the state will have in the coming years. The estimates are used as guides to develop the annual state budget. Read more

2022 Michigan Library Awards Honorees

The Michigan Library Awards are brought to you by the Michigan Library Association (MLA), the Library of Michigan, the Library of Michigan Foundation, the Michigan Association for Media in Education (MAME), and the Michigan Academic Library Association (MiALA). It’s the Michigan library community's own version of the Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Grammys, and the Tonys, and the can't-miss event for recognizing Michigan's amazing library professionals and libraries.

Couldn’t attend the Michigan Library Awards in person? Grab some popcorn and watch a replay of the show on Facebook as we continue to recognize and celebrate our honorees! The recorded Michigan Library Awards program will be broadcast on MLA’s Facebook page on Thursday, November 3 at 7:00 PM.

Freedom to Read Legislation Update

Just when Michigan House members were set to introduce the Freedom to Read legislation in November, we stepped back and are taking a pause. Why? In the course of about two months, residents in the state of Michigan experienced a pause in the legislative cycle due to sine die; we saw two House Democrats elected in November to mayoral positions leaving the House evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, which also is leading to a new election being scheduled for these two districts in late April; and adding fuel to the fire, seven of the newly adopted House districts in SE Michigan were challenged and must be redrawn before any further elections can take place.

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